By Daily Mail Reporter
When The Port Mann Bridge opened in British Columbia earlier this month, it was touted to slash commute times up to an hour. But barely three weeks later the bridge was closed down after causing thousands of dollars in vehicular damage and injuries when massive chunks of ice began coming off the bridge's high cables and plummeting onto drivers below.
At ten lanes, the bridge is the widest in the world and the second longest in North America.
But outraged drivers are saying they'd rather have a leaner bridge without the hazards.
Real estate agent Simon Lu was caught in the assault of when a boulder of ice shattered his windshield.
'I just couldn’t believe what just happened,' he said. 'I was a little bit shocked at first. I didn’t stop the car. I just kept driving.'
The 31-year-old managed to get off the bridge without further incident.
Even British Columbia's transportation minister, Mary Polak, slammed the bridge's builders, Kiewit-Flatiron General Partnership, insisting 'taxpayers will not be on the hook for this.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252341/Worlds-widest-bridge-shut-just-weeks-opening-ice-bombs-rain-drivers.html#ixzz2Fr2ulRqq
When The Port Mann Bridge opened in British Columbia earlier this month, it was touted to slash commute times up to an hour. But barely three weeks later the bridge was closed down after causing thousands of dollars in vehicular damage and injuries when massive chunks of ice began coming off the bridge's high cables and plummeting onto drivers below.
At ten lanes, the bridge is the widest in the world and the second longest in North America.
But outraged drivers are saying they'd rather have a leaner bridge without the hazards.
Widest: With ten lanes the Port Mann Bridge is the widest in the world but massive ice bombs dropped on motorists closing it just three weeks after opening
Massive: The Port Mann Bridge took three years to build at a cost of more than $3 billion but only had three weeks of uninterrupted service
'I just couldn’t believe what just happened,' he said. 'I was a little bit shocked at first. I didn’t stop the car. I just kept driving.'
The 31-year-old managed to get off the bridge without further incident.
Even British Columbia's transportation minister, Mary Polak, slammed the bridge's builders, Kiewit-Flatiron General Partnership, insisting 'taxpayers will not be on the hook for this.'
'We will not live with the bridge in that way,' Mary Polak said in a news conference Thursday.
'When you purchase a product in a store, when you build a bridge for $3.3 billion, you believe that it will work. You expect it will work. When it doesn’t work you seek for redress to that. You seek for someone to refund your money or you seek for someone to resolve the problem.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252341/Worlds-widest-bridge-shut-just-weeks-opening-ice-bombs-rain-drivers.html#ixzz2Fr2ulRqq
